In recent years, as avian influenza and new type influenza are issued, aerial infection problems are becoming the main issue of society. For this reason, the subject with regard to a method of measuring airborne microbial particles in air is importantly treated, and a biosensor market is sharply growing accordingly.
As the existing method of measuring airborne microbial particles in air, there are a culture method in which airborne bioparticles in a sample gas are collected onto a surface of a solid or liquid suitable for growth to culture the collected bioparticles under an appropriate temperature-humidity condition for a predetermine time, thereby calculating the number of collected microorganism from the number of colony generated on the surface and a staining method in which bioparticles are stained to measure the number of microorganism by using a fluorescence microscope.
Recently, an adenosine triphosphate (ATP) bioluminescence method using a principle in which ATP reacts with luciferin/luciferase to emit light may be developed to allow a series of processes including ATP elimination process, ATP extraction, and luminescence amount measurement to be performed within about thirty minutes, thereby implementing rapid working.
However, according to the above-described methods, the airborne microbial particles existing in the air may not be measured in real time, and a series of handworks including a separate sampling process and pretreatment process is required. Thus, there is a limitation in that a system of automatically measuring the airborne microbial particles in the air can not be developed by using these methods.
FIG. 8 is a view of an electric dust collector provided in an airborne microbial measurement apparatus according to a related art.
Referring to FIG. 8, an electric dust collector according to the related art includes collection plates disposed on both sides thereof and a charge line (a discharge electrode) disposed between the collection plates disposed on both sides thereof.
When a high voltage is applied to the charge line, corona discharge occurs to generate ions. Here, predetermined particles in a gas are charged by the generated ions. Also, the charged particles may move and be collected to a dust collection electrode (the collection plate) by an electric force. That is, the electric dust collector may be understood as a dust collecting device that is capable of collecting predetermined particles using an electrostatic principle. The predetermined particles may include foreign substances such as dusts or airborne microorganism.
The airborne microbial measurement apparatus according to the related art includes the electric dust collector and a collection rod for collecting the microorganism collected onto the collection plate. In the airborne microbial measurement apparatus according to the related art, when the airborne microorganism is collected onto the collection plate by driving of the electric dust collector, a user manually put the collection rod into contact with the collection plate to collect or sample the airborne microorganism. Also, the collected airborne microorganism reacts with a lysis reagent to emit light. Here, the measurement apparatus detects the emitted light to measure a concentration of the microorganism.
Like this, in the case of the airborne microbial measurement apparatus according to the related art, since the collection rod has to be separately provided, and also the user has to collect the airborne microorganism collected onto the collection plate by using the collection rod, it takes a lot of time and also comes expensive.